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New York City Storm Surges: Climatology and an Analysis of the Wind
and Cyclone Evolution
BRIAN A. COLLE AND KATHERINE ROJOWSKY
School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University, State University of New York,
Stony Brook, New York
FRANK BUONAITO
Department of Geography, Hunter College of the City University of New York, New York, New York
(Manuscript received 26 January 2009, in final form 8 June 2009)
ABSTRACT
A climatological description (‘‘climatology’’) of storm surges and actual flooding (storm tide) events from
1959 to 2007 is presented for the New York City (NYC) harbor. The prevailing meteorological conditions
associated with these surges are also highlighted. Two surge thresholds of 0.6–1.0 m and .1.0 m were used
at the Battery, New York (south side of Manhattan in NYC), to identify minor and moderate events, respectively. The minor-surge threshold combined with a tide at or above mean high water (MHW) favors
a coastal flood advisory for NYC, and the moderate surge above MHW leads to a coastal flood warning. The
number of minor surges has decreased gradually during the last several decades at NYC while the number of
minor (storm tide) flooding events has increased slightly given the gradual rise in sea level. There were no
moderate flooding events at the Battery from 1997 to 2007, which is the quietest period during the last 50 yr.
However, if sea level rises 12–50 cm during the next century, the number of moderate flooding events is likely
to increase exponentially. Using cyclone tracking and compositing of the NCEP global reanalysis (before
1979) and regional reanalysis (after 1978) data, the mean synoptic evolution was obtained for the NYC surge
events. There are a variety of storm tracks associated with minor surges, whereas moderate surges favor
a cyclone tracking northward along the East Coast. The average surface winds at NYC veer from northwesterly at 48 h before the time of maximum surge to a persistent period of east-northeasterlies beginning
about 24 h before the surge. There is a relatively large variance in wind directions and speeds around the time
of maximum surge, thus suggesting the importance of other factors (fetch, storm duration and track, etc.).
1. Background and motivation
A large fraction of New York City (NYC) and coastal
Long Island (LI), New York, is less than 5 m above
mean sea level (MSL), making the region highly vulnerable to storm surge from both tropical storms and
East Coast winter cyclones (northeasters). For example,
during the December 1992 northeaster event, the water
levels at the Battery on the southern tip of Manhattan in
NYC (Fig. 1) peaked at ;2.5 m (8 ft) MSL (Colle et al.
2008; National Weather Service, Eastern Region 1994;
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers 1995). The sea level
overtopped the city’s seawalls for only a few hours, but it
Corresponding author address: Dr. Brian A. Colle, School of
Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, Stony Brook University/
SUNY, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5000.
E-mail: [email protected]
DOI: 10.1175/2009JAMC2189.1
Ó 2010 American Meteorological Society
was enough to flood the NYC subway and Port Authority
Trans-Hudson (PATH) train systems at Hoboken, New
Jersey, thus precipitating a shutdown of these transportation systems for several days.
The complex coastal geometry and bathymetry surrounding the NYC metropolitan region can enhance the
water levels and create difficult coastal flood forecasts.
Storm surge is enhanced in this region by the relatively
shallow continental shelf and the southward bend in the
coast from Long Island to New Jersey, which can funnel
water toward the NYC harbor area when there are lowlevel easterly winds (Bowman et al. 2005). The coastal
marsh and back-bay areas of the region, which are not represented in sophisticated storm-surge models (Westerink
et al. 2008), can also lead to localized flooding.
As a result of these complexities determining storm
surge, 85% of the coastal flood warnings issued by the
National Weather Service (NWS) did not ‘‘verify’’ for
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FIG. 1. The LI–NYC region of interest for this study. The Battery is the location of the storm-surge analysis, and the
hourly surface winds were obtained at JFK and BF airports.
the NYC–LI area for 2001–06 (R. Watling, NWS Eastern Region Headquarters, 2007, personal communication). This is in comparison with ;50% of warnings that
did not verify throughout the NWS Eastern Region
(along East Coast and eastern Great Lakes) during this
same period. The higher false-alarm rate for the NYC–LI
area is attributed in part to the general lack of water-level
observations and understanding about the movement of
water and waves near the complex shoreline surrounding
this area. As reviewed by Colle et al. (2008), there have
been recent advances in ocean/surge modeling to help
forecasters; however, there is still little understanding of
the detailed meteorological evolution and climatological frequency of storm surges in the NYC–LI region, and
it is a goal of this paper to improve that understanding.
Storm surge in the NYC–LI area can result from
tropical storms and extratropical cycles. Hurricanes
have directly hit NYC (Scileppi and Donnelly 2007), such
as on 3 September 1821 (Ludlum 1963) and 25 August
1893 (National Hurricane Center 2008). The category-3
(;110 kt; 1 kt ’ 0.5 m s21) winds during the 1821 event
flooded a large portion of southern Manhattan (Ludlum
1963), but at that time the NYC population was only
;150 000. There have been no other direct hits by major
hurricanes (greater than category 2) across NYC–LI since
the 1938 ‘‘Long Island Express’’ (National Hurricane
Center 2008). Hurricane Gloria (1985) was originally labeled as category 3 at landfall for Long Island but has
since been reanalyzed as category 1 (C. Landsea 2008,
personal communication). However, it is only a matter
of time before another major hurricane will impact the
NYC–LI area. The millions of people in this region and
the billions of dollars at risk provide more motivation to
understand the climatological behavior (‘‘climatology’’)
of storm surges in this area as well as the synoptic conditions that favor such events.
In contrast to tropical cyclones, in which storm-surge
damage is generally confined to the coastal areas near
landfall, East Coast winter storms (northeasters) can
cause millions of dollars in damage over a larger region
along the coast. For example, there was US$300 million
in property damage and major coastal erosion along the
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COLLE ET AL.
mid-Atlantic coast during the March 1962 extratropical
cyclone (Dolan 1987), and severe coastal erosion also
occurred from Florida to New England during the 1993
March ‘‘Superstorm’’ (Kocin et al. 1995). As a result,
intensity scales have been developed for the coastal
impacts of East Coast winter storms (Dolan and Davis
1992; Zielinski 2002), in the same spirit as the 1–5 Saffir–
Simpson scale used for hurricanes (Simpson 1974). For
example, Dolan and Davis (1992) developed a 1–5 index
based on storm ‘‘power,’’ which was defined as the
storm’s duration times the square of the maximum significant wave height.
The number of storm-surge events is likely related to
track and frequency of cyclones near the coast. Numerous cool-season cyclone climatologies have been
completed over the eastern United States and western
Atlantic Ocean (Reitan 1974; Colucci 1976; Zishka and
Smith 1980; Hayden 1981; Hirsch et al. 2001; Chan et al.
2003). For example, Hirsch et al. (2001) showed that
there were ;12 East Coast winter storms annually from
1951 to 1997 on average, with a maximum during January. They also noted significant interannual variability,
with periods ranging from 2.3 to 10.2 yr, and there are
44% more East Coast storms during El Niño years as
compared with neutral or La Niña periods. Davis et al.
(1993) highlighted that northeaster frequency decreased
gradually from the 1950s to the late 1970s and then increased again through the mid-1980s. DeGaetano et al.
(2002) showed that active East Coast winter-storm
seasons tend to occur when there is above-normal temperature in the Gulf of Mexico during the previous
storm season and during a positive phase of the North
Atlantic Oscillation (and also El Niño). These studies
have illustrated the climatological behavior of storm
frequency, but there has been little work linking this
variability to storm surges at particular locations. Zhang
et al. (2000) used storm-surge data for several stations
along the East Coast to highlight that there were no
significant trends in the number and intensity of large
surge events (greater than two standard deviations) over
the last several decades, but the interdecadal variability
was relatively large.
This paper focuses on the NYC area, given the large
population and billions of dollars of infrastructure at
risk. The first goal is to describe the frequency of minorsurge and moderate-surge events for NYC from 1959 to
2007. Second, since coastal flooding is also dependent
on the phase of the tide, the frequency of coastal-flood
events (surge plus tide) is also documented for NYC.
Last, although it is fairly well known that many of these
coastal-flooding events are likely attached to extratropical and tropical storms, the exact position, track,
and strength of the cyclones as well as the associated
87
wind direction and speeds favoring coastal flooding have
not been quantified. Forecasters and emergency managers would benefit from a refined conceptual model of
what local and regional atmospheric conditions favor
flooding in the NYC area, and how the frequency of
coastal flooding has changed over the past several decades. Overall, this study will address the following four
motivational questions:
1) What is the interannual variability of minor- and
moderate-storm-surge events for the NYC area
during the last 50 yr? How does this compare with
the actual number of flooding events given the storm
tide (defined as the surge plus the tide)?
2) How is the number of flooding events affected by
a slowly rising sea level over several decades?
3) How do the wind speed and direction evolve around
NYC for weak-surge and moderate-surge events?
4) What are the cyclone positions and tracks that favor
storm-surge events for the NYC area?
Section 2 describes the data and methods used in the
analysis. Section 3 discusses the climatology as well as
the wind and cyclone evolution associated with NYC
storm-surge events. A summary and conclusions are
presented in section 4.
2. Data and methods
According to the NWS, a coastal-flood advisory is
often issued around the Battery when the water level
reaches 2.04 m (6.7 feet) above mean lower-low water
(MLLW) (J. Tongue, Upton/NYC NWS office, 2007,
personal communication), and therefore we will refer to
these as minor-surge events. The MLLW datum corresponds to the mean of all the lower of the low tides each
cycle for the most recent epoch (the 19-yr period from
1983 to 2001; http://tidesonline.nos.noaa.gov/). Another
reference is mean high water (MHW), which is the mean
of all high tides during the same period. Because MHW
is 1.44 m (4.73 ft) above MLLW at the Battery, a surge
of 0.60 m (1.97 ft) above MHW is necessary to reach the
coastal-flood-advisory criteria of the NWS at this location. A coastal-flood warning is issued by the NWS when
the water level at the Battery exceeds 2.44 m (8.00 ft)
above MLLW, which equates to a surge of ;1.0 m
(;3.27 ft) above MHW. Because any particular stormsurge event can occur around a high tide, the surge
thresholds for flooding are calculated relative to MHW
in this paper. This provides an upper bound on the
number of possible flooding events. Thus, thresholds of
0.6–1.0 m and .1.0 m are used to denote minor- and
moderate-surge events, respectively.
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FIG. 2. Time series of the daily maximum positive surge (water level minus astronomical tide) at the Battery (see
Fig. 1 for location) between 1959 and 2007. The two dashed lines represent the minor (0.6 m) and moderate (1.0 m)
surge thresholds used in this study.
The difference between a minor- and moderate-surge
event is only 0.4 m during MHW around NYC, and
therefore forecasters also need to be aware of splashover from wind waves that can locally enhance inundation flooding. For example, Cannon (2007) and
Cannon et al. (2009) showed that 19% of storms did not
meet the benchmark flooding threshold at Portland,
Maine, yet flooding still occurred as a result of wave
splash-over. It is fortunate that in the lower-Manhattan
area the large ocean waves break before entering the
NYC harbor. Thus, there is limited swell entering the
harbor, and there is limited fetch for local wave generation at the Battery for easterly or northeasterly winds
with an approaching coastal storm. Other areas around
the NYC harbor (south and west side) as well as the
open-ocean coastal areas of New York and New Jersey
may have larger waves.
Verified hourly water-level observations at the Battery from 1959 to 2007 were obtained from the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA;
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/). To obtain the maximum daily surge, first the surge was calculated at each
hour in the dataset by subtracting the NOAA-predicted
astronomical tide. Second, because the NOAA tide data
were based on the 1983–2001 epoch, the surge time series was detrended (subtract mean or best-fit line from
the data) to extract the influence of local sea level rise on
the tides. NOAA estimates a sea level rise at the Battery
station of ;2.77 mm yr21, which is close to our derived
trend over nearly 50 yr (;2.85 mm yr21). Last, to remove the other long-period fluctuations, the average
surge at each hour of the year from 1959 to 2007 was
removed. For example, the average surge for all of the
0100 UTC 1 January times from 1959 to 2007 was obtained and was then subtracted from the surge for the
same day and time of each individual year. To obtain the
minor (0.6–1.0 m) and moderate (.1.0 m) events, first
the daily maximum surge and its time of occurrence
were obtained for each 0000–0000 UTC period for each
day (Fig. 2). If a maximum daily surge exceeded the
specified threshold (e.g., 0.6 m) for two straight days,
only the largest of the two surge events was chosen if the
two surges occurred within 24 h of each other. If a surge
event was already counted as a moderate event during
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COLLE ET AL.
the 24-h period, it was not counted as a minor-surge
event.
The minor and moderate surges do not represent the
actual coastal-flood events at the Battery, because many
surges occurred during a tide below MHW. As noted above,
minor (coastal-flood advisory) or moderate (coastal-flood
warning) flooding is favored around the Battery when
the storm tide (surge plus tide) exceeds 2.04 and 2.44 m
above MLLW (using the 1983–2001 epoch), respectively.
Using these thresholds and the NOAA hourly waterlevel data at the Battery (based on the same epoch), the
climatology of minor- and moderate-storm-tide-flooding
events was also obtained for the Battery using the same
24-h procedure as for the storm-surge events above. The
number of minor and moderate events was determined
before and after adding a sea level rise correction obtained by detrending the Battery surge data.
The hourly surface observations from the National
Climatic Data Center for John F. Kennedy airport
(JFK) from 1973 to 2007 were used to investigate the
10-m-wind evolution associated with the Battery surge
events, and additional observations from 1968 to 1970
were obtained from nearby (within ;5 km) Bennett
Field airport (BF in Fig. 1). Before 1968, no observations
were taken at night at BF; thus, the analysis is limited to
the available data from 1968 to 2007. These two stations
were used since they are relatively close to the Battery
(Fig. 1) and they have a much longer record than offshore buoy data. A statistical wind direction and speed
analysis at JFK/BF was constructed using the 226 minorsurge (0.6–1.0 m) and 46 moderate-surge (.1.0 m)
events (Table 1). The storm surges at the Battery were
also separated into tropical-storm events using the National Hurricane Center (NHC) best-track data (Jarvinen
et al. 1984). This resulted in 17 tropical-storm events from
1959 to 2007 (Table 2).
To determine the cyclone positions and tracks associated with the surge events, the associated cyclones
since 1979 were identified and tracked manually using
sea level pressure data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), which is available every 3 h
at 32-km grid spacing (Mesinger et al. 2006). Before
1979, the National Centers for Environmental Prediction
(NCEP)–National Center for Atmospheric Research
reanalysis at 28 resolution was used every 6 h (Kalnay
et al. 1996). The closest 3- or 6-h reanalysis time to the
time of maximum surge was used in the track analysis.
The relevant cyclone at the time of maximum surge was
identified as the closest cyclone that had at least one
closed 2-hPa isobar of sea level pressure and a minimum
pressure of 1012 hPa. The cyclone positions were saved
on a 1.08 3 1.08 latitude–longitude grid. The pressure
minimum associated with the cyclones was tracked
TABLE 1. List of the dates (time is UTC) and amount of surge for
the 46 moderate-surge (.1.0 m above MHW) events or the NYC
area from 1959 to 2007.
Date
Surge (m)
0600 19 Feb 1960
0600 26 Feb 1960
1800 12 Sep 1960
1000 4 Feb 1961
0600 9 Mar 1961
1400 13 Apr 1961
1900 6 Mar 1962
1600 13 Jan 1964
1600 23 Jan 1966
1400 30 Jan 1966
2100 27 Jan 1967
1500 12 Nov 1968
1000 17 Dec 1970
1000 28 Aug 1971
1100 25 Nov 1971
0500 4 Feb 1972
2100 19 Feb 1972
2200 8 Nov 1972
0100 16 Dec 1972
0400 10 Aug 1976
0300 8 Nov 1977
1700 20 Jan 1978
0000 7 Feb 1978
0200 25 Jan 1979
1800 25 Oct 1980
1800 4 Dec 1983
1400 29 Mar 1984
1700 27 Sep 1985
1000 5 Nov 1985
0100 23 Jan 1987
0900 31 Oct 1991
1700 11 Dec 1992
0100 5 Mar 1993
2200 13 Mar 1993
1500 4 Jan 1994
1000 3 Mar 1994
0900 24 Dec 1994
0000 15 Nov 1995
0600 8 Jan 1996
0300 20 Mar 1996
1900 19 Oct 1996
1200 6 Dec 1996
0400 30 Dec 1997
1500 5 Feb 1998
2300 16 Sep 1999
1300 25 Oct 2005
1.08
1.03
1.73
1.33
1.01
1.11
1.39
1.01
1.14
1.13
1.12
1.37
1.10
1.22
1.25
1.08
1.01
1.08
1.10
1.17
1.01
1.19
1.11
1.38
1.33
1.01
1.57
2.00
1.13
1.12
1.40
1.75
1.09
1.46
1.01
1.18
1.01
1.24
1.35
1.11
1.01
1.16
1.02
1.05
1.07
1.12
manually every 6 h using the reanalysis sea level pressure data from 48 h before the time of maximum surge
at the Battery to 24 h after the maximum surge. Because
of the large number of minor-surge events (244), the
minor threshold was increased from 0.6 to 0.8 m to focus
on the more significant events (64) and to make it more
feasible to manually track a fewer number of cases. The
cyclone tracks for these relatively minor events will be
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TABLE 2. List of the 17 tropical-storm dates (time is UTC) and
surges for the NYC area from 1959 to 2007.
Date
Surge (m)
1400 30 Jul 1960
1800 12 Sep 1960
1700 22 Oct 1961
0600 23 Oct 1961
1000 29 Aug 1971
1600 22 Jun 1972
0400 10 Aug 1976
1900 14 Oct 1977
1700 27 Sep 1985
0900 31 Oct 1991
1600 13 Jul 1996
0200 9 Oct 1996
2300 16 Sep 1999
0900 19 Sep 2003
1300 25 Oct 2005
0200 26 Oct 2005
0000 3 Sep 2006
0.64
1.73
0.73
0.64
1.21
0.74
1.17
0.83
2.00
1.40
0.61
0.78
1.07
0.62
1.09
0.65
0.89
compared with the .1.0-m-surge events. The 17 tropicalcyclone tracks since 1959 were obtained using the besttrack data at NHC. A composite evolution of upper-level
geopotential heights and sea level pressure for the
moderate-surge events was also created using the Earth
System Research Laboratory Internet site (http://www.
cdc.noaa.gov/Composites/Hour).
3. Results
a. Climatology of NYC storm surges
Figure 2 shows a time series of the maximum daily
storm surge at the Battery from 1959 to 2007.1 The
largest surge in the dataset is Hurricane Gloria (;2.0-m
surge), which fortunately made landfall over central LI
near a low tide on 28 September 1985. Hurricane Donna
on 12 September 1960 also had a relatively high surge
(1.73 m), as did the 11 December 1992 northeaster
(1.75 m) highlighted in Colle et al. (2008). The number
of events decreases exponentially from 253 cases for
a 0.5–0.6-m daily surge to only 4 events for a .1.5-m
surge (Fig. 3).
There is large interannual variability of negative and
positive surges (Fig. 2), with several large-surge events
(61 m) occurring each decade on average. However,
the most recent several years (2000–07) have been rel-
1
The Battery data were missing for four 1–3-month periods:
from late 1976 to early 1977, late 1996, late 2000, and late 2003.
These missing periods are relatively short and do not affect the
results.
FIG. 3. The number of storm surges every 0.1 m, starting at 0.5 m,
at the Battery from 1959 to 2007. The minor- and moderate-surge
events are identified as those surge heights 0.6–1.0 m and .1.0 m,
respectively.
atively quiet for storm surge, with only one surge event
.1.0 m. To illustrate this interannual variability more
clearly, the annual number of surge events from 0.6 to
1.0 m (minor events) and .1.0 m (moderate events) is
shown for the years from 1959 to 2007 (Fig. 4). The
number of minor-surge events ranges from 0 in 1981 to
14 in 1983 (Fig. 4a). During 1959–73, at least four minorsurge events occurred annually, but afterward these
minor-surge events tended to become less frequent, with
a noticeable reduction from 1984 to 1991. This trend is
qualitatively similar to the relatively active period in
East Coast winter storms during the 1960s as compared
with the late 1970s and early 1980s (Davis et al. 1993).
Overall, the 5-yr running mean of minor surges has decreased from around seven events per year in the early
1960s to around five events in the early 2000s.
There is also some qualitative relationship between
the number of minor surges at the Battery and strong
El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. Three of
the four largest annual numbers of minor-surge events
occurred during relatively strong El Niño periods. For
example, during the large 1982/83 El Niño (see online at
http://www.cpc.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/
ensostuff/ensoyears.shtml), there were 14 surge events
in 1983, especially early in the year (not shown). There
were also relatively large numbers of minor surges
during the 1972/73 and 1997/98 strong El Niño years. In
contrast, there were relatively few minor-surge events
during the strong La Niña periods of 1973/74, 1975/76, and
1988/89. There are too few years/events to develop a statistical correlation with moderate–strong ENSO (little or
no correlation exists between surge and the more frequent
minor-ENSO events). Storm surge at NYC may be more
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COLLE ET AL.
FIG. 4. The annual number of storm-surge events at the Battery
(a) between 0.6 and 1.0 m above MHW and (b) greater than 1.0 m
above MHW from 1959 to 2007. The solid line in (a) represents a
5-yr running mean of surge.
favored during El Niño, since northeasters occur slightly
more often along the East Coast during El Niño events
than during La Niña (Hirsch et al. 2001).
The moderate-surge events also have large interannual variability (Fig. 4b). There were a relatively large
number of moderate surge events during the 1960s–early
1970s as well as during the early 1990s. Many of the relatively large El Niño events (e.g., 1982/83 and 1997/98)
were not associated with anomalously large numbers of
moderate surges. There were 15 moderate-surge events
during the 1990s, but there was only 1 event during the
period from 2000 to 2007. This recent decrease in surge
activity from 2000 to 2007 at the Battery suggests a
change in the number, intensity, or track of the East
Coast cyclones as compared with the early–mid-1990s.
The storm tide (surge plus tide) was used to determine
the annual number of actual minor-flood and moderateflood events (days) at the Battery from 1959 to 2007
91
FIG. 5. The annual number of observed (storm tide) minor
flooding events at the Battery (a) before and (b) after correcting for
rising sea level from 1959 to 2007. The solid line is the 5-yr running
mean. A minor flood (coastal flood advisory) occurs when the total
water level exceeds 2.04 m above MLLW.
without removing sea level rise (Figs. 5a, 6). The number
of minor-flood events increased later in the period (after
the early 1990s). In contrast, it was shown above that the
number of minor surges decreased in recent decades
(Fig. 4a); thus, it was hypothesized that the increase in
minor-flooding events is the result of a gradual increase
in sea level. A sea level rise of ;2.8 mm yr21 at the
Battery results in a 0.10–0.15-m-higher water level in the
early 2000s than in the early 1960s. Removing the sea
level rise decreases the annual number of minor-flood
events during the1990s–2000s by 1–2 and increases the
minor events during the 1960s by 1–4 (Fig. 5b). As a result, removing sea level rise eliminates the increasing
trend in minor-flood events. A relatively small change in
water level (;0.1 m) can change the number of minor
events noticeably, since there are many events each year
near the threshold of a minor surge (Fig. 2).
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FIG. 6. As in Fig. 5a, but for the moderate flood events. A
moderate flood (coastal flood warning) occurs when the water level
exceeds 2.44 m above MLLW.
There were a few clusters of moderate-flood events
during the 1960s and mid-1980s–early 1990s (Fig. 6). Of
interest is that there were no moderate-flood events
from 1997 to 2007. This is the longest period in the
nearly 50-yr record without a coastal-flood event. Future
work will need to determine whether this is from some
change in cyclone activity and intensity along the coast.
The sea level rise correction had no impact on the distribution of moderate-flood events (not shown). This is
consistent with the results of Zhang et al. (2000), who
showed no increase in the number of major-surge events
during the past several decades at several other sites
along the East Coast. There is less impact by a ;0.1-m
sea level rise for the moderate events, since a large surge
(.1.0 m) is required for significant flooding to occur.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(Parry et al. 2007) estimated that sea level will increase
between 0.18 and 0.59 m during the next century. This
will likely increase the number of moderate-flooding
events for NYC. To illustrate this growing problem, sea
level rises of 12.5, 25, and 50 cm were added to the observed water levels from 1959 to 2007 (Fig. 7). Looking
at the 1997–2007 period as reference, during which there
were no moderate-flood events in the current record
(Fig. 6), this incremental rise in sea level increases the
number of moderate-flooding events exponentially to 4,
16, and 136 events, respectively. This illustrates that
NYC will become much more vulnerable to storm surge
as sea level continues to rise.
Figure 8 shows the monthly frequency of minor- and
major-surge events at the Battery from 1959 to 2007,
with the tropical-cyclone events in dark gray. Storm
surges occur primarily during the cool season (October–
VOLUME 49
FIG. 7. The number of moderate flooding events each year at the
Battery for the 1959–2007 period after adding a sea level rise of
12.5 cm (white bars), 25 cm (gray bars), and 50 cm (black bars).
March) as a result of extratropical cyclones. For the
minor events (Fig. 8a), the number of surge events increases rapidly from 3 in September to 19 in October as the
extratropical storm track develops. The number of minorsurge events more than doubles from 21 in November to
52 in December and then decreases slightly to 47 in
January. The relatively large number in December occurs a month before the climatological peak for northeasters along the East Coast that occurs in January
(Hirsch et al. 2001). The lack of a well-defined January
surge maximum may be the result of the storm track
shifting slightly south (away) from NYC as the winter
progresses. The number of minor-surge events rapidly
decreases from 39 in March to 19 in April as the number
of cyclones decreases.
For the moderate-surge events (Fig. 8b), there are
several events from August (two) to September (three)
associated with landfalling tropical storms (Table 2). As
a result, there is a more steady increase in all moderatesurge numbers from August to October than for all of
the minor surges. The number of moderate surges further
increases from October (four) to December (seven) as
the northeaster frequency increases. The peak number of
moderate events occurs in January (nine), and then there
is a rapid decrease from March (seven) to April (one).
There are no moderate surges between May and July,
since northeasters are relatively weak and there are few
hurricanes this early in the warm season.
b. Surface wind evolution associated with
surge events
Figure 9 shows the average hourly evolution (and 1
standard deviation) of the surface (10 m) wind direction
and speed at JFK/BF for the minor and moderate surges
JANUARY 2010
COLLE ET AL.
93
FIG. 8. The number of storm-surge events per month at the
Battery from 1959 to 2007 for a surge of (a) 0.6–1.0 m and (b)
greater than 1.0 m. The tropical-cyclone events are dark shaded.
FIG. 9. Average (a) wind direction (8) and (b) wind speed (m s21)
at 10 m for JFK and BF for the minor-surge (gray line) and moderatesurge (black line) events at the Battery. The line denoting 6one
standard deviation is given by the vertical bar every few hours.
at the Battery. At 48 h before the time of maximum
surge (248 h), the average wind direction is northwesterly (Fig. 9a). From 236 to 224 h, the average wind
veers from northerly to northeasterly (508–708). This
wind direction persists until the time of maximum surge.
The wind then rapidly backs to northwesterly 6 and 12 h
after the time of maximum surge for the minor and
moderate events, respectively. The relatively large standard deviation in the wind directions (208–608 variation
around mean) suggests that a NYC storm surge can occur
for a fairly broad spectrum of wind directions around the
mean. The wind direction variance is about one-half as
large for the moderate events for the 12-h period before
maximum surge, suggesting a more well-defined wind
evolution for these events.
The average wind speeds are relatively weak (,6 m s21)
24–48 h before the time of maximum surge (Fig. 9b),
with slightly (1–2 m s21) stronger mean wind evolution
for the minor events (significant at the 95% level with
Student’s t test). The minor and moderate composite
winds increase rapidly around 20 h before the time of
maximum surge and reach their peak approximately 2 h
before maximum surge. The average peak wind speed for
the moderate events (13 m s21) is ;44% greater than the
minor events (9 m s21), which is significant at the 99%
level using a Student’s t test. The standard deviation for
the minor (62 m s21) and moderate (63 m s21) events
around the time of maximum surge is relatively large,
which suggests that there are a large number of events
with greater and weaker winds around the mean. The
average wind speed then rapidly decreases, such that it is
similar to the minor events (;6.0 m s21) at ;20 h after
maximum surge.
In summary, as expected, the moderate events have
a larger wind speed on average than the minor events,
but there is a large variance; thus, the local wind speed
may not be a useful predictor for the magnitude of the
surge event. A northeast wind favors a positive surge at
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
the Battery, since the surface wind stress pulls water
toward the New York Bight (near Sandy Hook, New
Jersey, in Fig. 1). This elevated water setup over the bight
forces the surge northward into the New York harbor
(Colle et al. 2008). Furthermore, a northeast wind favors
a setup of higher water to the right of the wind (northwest
to the coast) through Ekman transport. Of interest is that
the average peak wind speed occurs 2 h before the time
of peak surge at the Battery. A further investigation of
individual cases also revealed stronger winds a few hours
before peak surge for several cases, which suggests that it
can take 1–2 h for the high water to make it into the NYC
harbor (Battery) area after the peak wind.
The surface wind distribution for the surge events at
the Battery is shown more explicitly using wind rose
plots for JFK at 224, 212, and 0 h relative to the time of
maximum surge (Fig. 10). At 48 h before the time of
maximum surge for the minor events (not shown), there
is a large fraction ranging from northerly (13%), to
northeasterly (12%), to west-southwesterly (8%). Nearly
all winds are less than 12 m s21 at this time. The wind
direction and speed variability is similar at 248 h for the
moderate events (not shown).
At 24 h before the minor-surge events (Fig. 10a), over
85% of the wind directions are from northerly to northeasterly, with a maximum in the northeasterly direction
(;16%). Nearly one-half of the wind speeds are less than
6 m s21 at this time. The moderate events also have relatively light winds at this time (Fig. 10b), but the winds are
oriented more often in the east-northeasterly direction
(;26%). By 212 h (Figs. 10c,d), nearly 60% of the winds
are from north-northeasterly to east-northeasterly for the
minor surges, and this percentage increases to ;80% for
the moderate-surge events. Also, approximately 20% of
the winds in moderate surges are greater than 9 m s21,
and this decreases to ;15% for the minor surges.
At the time of maximum surge (Figs. 10e,f), ;90% of
the wind directions for the moderate events range from
northerly to easterly, with a clear peak from northeasterly
to east-northeasterly. Nearly 70% of the wind speeds are
greater than 12 m s21 for the moderate surges. In contrast, nearly 40% of the winds associated with the minor
surges are outside the northerly–easterly quadrant, with
a large fraction (30%) in the east-southeasterly–southerly
directions. Also, only a relatively small fraction (,10%)
have wind speeds greater than 12 m s21 for the minor
surges in the northeasterly–easterly directions.
By 112 h (not shown), the winds rotate rapidly to more
westerly for the minor and moderate surges, with most
directions ranging from west-southwesterly to northerly.
These offshore directions are less favorable for storm
surge along the coast, thus explaining the rapid decrease
in positive surge.
VOLUME 49
c. Cyclone tracks and composites
The developing northeasterly winds occurring with the
onset of a surge event are suggestive of an approaching
cyclone along the East Coast (northeaster). The cyclone
positions were manually tracked backward 48 h and
forward 24 h every 6 h from the time of maximum surge
using the reanalysis sea level pressure data and methods
described in section 2. The surges of 0.8–1.0 m (64
events) and .1.0 m (46 events) were used in the analysis
from 1959 to 2007. A slightly higher threshold of 0.8 m
was used instead of 0.6 m for the minor-surge tracks,
because this made the effort of manual cyclone tracking
more manageable. A separate analysis at the time of
maximum surge was completed for the 0.6–1.0-m events,
in which all cyclone positions at this time were marked
for a region from 328N, 868W to 508N, 628W.
For the 64 minor surges (Fig. 11a), many cyclones
originate over the southeastern United States at 248 h
and then track northeastward both inland and offshore
of the mid-Atlantic coast by the time of maximum surge.
Afterward, they continue northeastward over the northeastern United States and Atlantic by 24 h after maximum surge. There is a large amount of scatter in these
tracks, with a cluster of tracks along the coast and a few
others originating near the Great Lakes region. Overall,
a large number of these surge tracks do not represent the
‘‘classic’’ northeaster that tracks northeastward from the
southeastern U.S. coast to the northeastern U.S. coast,2
representing a ‘‘Miller type A’’ track (Miller 1946; Kocin
and Uccellini 1990). Rather, there are a number of inland
tracks that are more similar to a ‘‘Miller type B’’ track
(Miller 1946).
For the stronger (.1.0 m) surge events (Fig. 11b), the
cyclone tracks are clustered more along the coast than
the minor-surge events. There are several exceptions,
but the tracks for the stronger events suggest more cyclones developing along the Gulf of Mexico Coast or
Southeast Coast and then moving north-northeast toward the southern tip of New Jersey. This is more
representative of a Miller type-A northeaster storm
track.
Figure 12 shows the number of surface cyclones at
each point on a 18 latitude–longitude grid at the time of
peak surge at the Battery for events with surges of 0.6–1.0
and .1.0 m. During the peak of a minor surge (Fig. 12a),
the cluster of cyclones is located around New Jersey, where
there is a peak of nine occurrences, and a surrounding
region of at least three occurrences within 200–300 km
of New Jersey. However, there are many NYC surge
2
About 13 of these tracks are tropical-storm events. The tropical
cases will be plotted separately in Fig. 15.
JANUARY 2010
COLLE ET AL.
95
FIG. 10. Surface wind-rose plots at JFK/BF showing the frequency of wind direction and
speed (shaded; m s21) at 24 h before the time of maximum surge at the Battery for the (a)
minor- and (b) moderate-surge events. (c),(d) As in (a) and (b), but for 12 h before the time of
maximum surge. (e),(f) As in (a) and (b), but for the time of maximum surge.
events with a cyclone position that is located either well
offshore or over the Great Lakes, which suggests that
a nearby developing cyclone is not a necessary prerequisite for a minor-surge event. In fact, 14 minor-surge
events did not even have a cyclone in this plotted region
and could not be included in this analysis. Of these
noncyclone events, 10 events were associated with sur-
face high pressure over New England and generally
lower pressure to the south (not shown), which still favors easterlies across the NYC region (not shown).
All moderate surges were associated with a cyclone
event within ;1000 km of NYC (Fig. 12b). The maximum frequency in cyclone position (nine occurrences) is
situated just offshore (east) of Delaware. Overall, there
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
VOLUME 49
FIG. 11. (a) Cyclone tracks from 48 h before the time of maximum minor surge (0.8–1.0 m) at the Battery to 24 h after maximum
surge, every 6 h. (b) As in (a), but for the moderate-surge (.1.0 m)
events. The NYC area is denoted by the white box.
is a fairly large displacement between the location of
most cyclones and the NYC surge, thus emphasizing that
the surge impacts can occur relatively far from the cyclone center, especially in comparison with most hurricanes. The variance in storm positions indicates that
other factors such as the duration and intensity of the
storm and the radius of strong winds are likely important, rather than just the proximity of the low center.
A composite of the moderate-surge (.1.0 m) events
at the Battery using the NCEP reanalysis and NARR
(see section 2 for details) highlights the synoptic evolution
at the surface and at 500 hPa. At 48 h before the time of
maximum surge (248 h), a short-wave trough at 500 hPa
is located over the central United States (Fig. 13a). During
the next day (224 h), this trough amplifies and is situated
near the Mississippi River Valley (Fig. 13b). The 500-hPa
trough further amplifies and becomes negatively tilted by
hour 0 (Fig. 13c), with the center of circulation over West
Virginia. The trough weakens and lifts northeastward
over northern New England by hour 24 (Fig. 13d).
FIG. 12. (a) Surface cyclone position at the time of maximum
surge for the surge events between 0.6 and 1.0 m. The number of
cyclones every 1.08 of latitude and longitude is given by the filledcircle sizes in the bottom key. (b) As in (a), but for the moderatesurge (.1.0 m) events.
At the surface at 236 h (Fig. 14a), an inverted trough
extends northward from the Gulf Coast to the Midwest.
Meanwhile, surface high pressure is located over southeastern Quebec, Canada. By 224 h (Fig. 14b), cyclogenesis over the Southeast results in a surface cyclone of
1012 hPa near Georgia and the Florida Panhandle while
surface high pressure (1024 hPa) is entrenched over
northern New England. As a result, the north–south surface pressure gradient increases along the mid-Atlantic
Coast. The cyclone intensifies to 1004 hPa and moves
northward to the coast of North Carolina by 212 h
(Fig. 14c), and the pressure gradient continues to increase
over the NYC area. The orientation of the isobars would
seem to favor strong easterly surface winds; however, the
winds are slightly more east-northeasterly in the JFK time
series (cf. Fig. 10d), since there is likely some cold-air
JANUARY 2010
COLLE ET AL.
97
FIG. 13. Composite of 500-hPa geopotential heights (solid every 60 m) for the moderate-storm-surge events (.1.0 m) at (a) 248, (b) 224,
(c) 0, and (d) 124 h relative to the time of maximum surge.
channeling (damming) along the east side of the New
England terrain (Bell and Bosart 1988). At the time of
maximum surge (Fig. 14d), the cyclone deepens to 996 hPa
and is located just south of the coast of New Jersey.
The cyclone weakens slowly to 998 hPa over Cape Cod,
Massachusetts, by 12 h (Fig. 14e) and then to 999 hPa
over southern Nova Scotia, Canada, by 24 h (Fig. 14f).
The above composite simply denotes an average of all
cyclone events, but, as the storm tracks illustrate, there is
a fairly large variance in the tracks approaching the NYC
area (Fig. 11). Furthermore, there are only five hurricanes
in the above composite, and if this sample were larger the
composite would likely show a composite track just offshore the coast. For example, there were 17 tropical events
from 1959 to 2007 that yielded minor-to-moderate surges
(Table 2). Figure 15 shows the tracks of tropical minorand moderate-surge events. Most of these events originate over the northern Caribbean Sea or Gulf of Mexico
at 48 h before the time of maximum surge at the Battery.
Nearly 60% of these cyclones move northward along the
East Coast and pass within ;200 km of NYC. However,
there are a relatively large number of other cases that
have tracks farther away from NYC, thus again illustrating the diverse set of cyclone tracks that yield a potentially problematic storm surge around NYC.
4. Summary and conclusions
The goal of this paper is to understand the climatological frequency of storm-surge and coastal-flooding
events at NYC from 1959 to 2007 as well as the local
surface winds and cyclone tracks during these events.
Two surge thresholds of 0.6–1.0 and 1.0 m were used to
denote minor- and moderate-flooding events (maximum
surge over 24 h) at the Battery (south side of Manhattan
in NYC), respectively. The minor- and moderate-surge
thresholds combined with a tide above mean high water
are associated with a coastal-flood advisory and warning,
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
VOLUME 49
FIG. 14. Composite of sea level pressure (solid contours; every 2 hPa) for the moderate-storm-surge events (.1.0 m) at (a) 236, (b) 224,
(c) 212, (d) 0, (e) 112, and (f) 124 h relative to the time of maximum surge.
respectively. There were 244 minor and 46 moderate
daily surges from 1959 to 2007, which, combined with
the observed tide (storm tide), yielded 174 minor- and
16 moderate-flooding events.
The number of minor- and moderate-surge events
varies dramatically each year, ranging from 14 to 0 minor
events. The number of minor-surge events has decreased
gradually from a relatively active period during the 1960s
JANUARY 2010
COLLE ET AL.
FIG. 15. Tropical-cyclone tracks for 1959–2007 from 48 h before
the time of maximum minor surge (0.6–1.0 m) at the Battery to
12 h after maximum surge, every 6 h.
to noticeably fewer events in the late 1980s and 2000–07.
Some of this variation matches qualitatively the variation
in cyclone frequency determined by previous studies, and
three of the top four minor-surge years were associated
with years with strong El Niño, whereas the years with
strongest La Niña tended to have fewer surges than did
other years. There has been only one moderate-surge
event during the period from 2000 to 2007, but since this
event occurred during a relatively low tide there were no
actual moderate-flooding (storm tide) events during this
period. The 1997–2007 period is the quietest moderatesurge period in the ;50-yr dataset, which suggests that
the cyclone intensities and/or tracks may be different
than they were 10–20 yr ago.
The number of minor-flood (storm tide) events has
been steadily increasing since 1990 even though the
number of minor-surge events has been decreasing. This
apparent paradox can be explained by the fact that sea
level has been rising by about 2.8 mm yr21 on average at
the Battery during the past 50 yr. After removing this
sea level rise from the Battery water levels, the number
of minor-flood events no longer increases over the decades. Thus, sea level rise over the last few decades may
already be enhancing the number of nuisance flooding
(coastal-flood advisory) events around NYC. The sea
level rise has not increased the number of moderateflooding (coastal-flood warning) events in the last several decades. Parry et al. (2007) estimates that the global
average sea level will likely rise by 0.18–0.59 m during
the next century. If one increases sea level at the Battery
99
by 13, 25, and 50 cm, the number of moderate-flooding
events during the 1997–2007 period increases to 4, 16,
and 136 events, respectively. This illustrates that NYC
will be increasingly more vulnerable to storm surge as
sea level continues to rise, thus suggesting the need to
take more immediate action to protect the city from
more frequent and larger flooding events.
The tracking of many individual cyclone events suggests that minor flooding occurs for a diverse set of storm
tracks around the East Coast, whereas moderate coastal
floods are more associated with a cyclone track northward along the coast. This variability was highlighted
in the surface wind evolution at John F. Kennedy and
Bennett Field airports, located relatively close to the
Battery. The average winds veer from an average northwesterly direction 248 h before the surge event to eastnortheasterly ;24 h before the time of maximum surge,
which persists until the time of maximum surge. The average wind direction is similar for the minor- and moderatesurge events, but the winds are more concentrated around
the east-northeast direction for the moderate events at the
time of maximum surge. The average wind speeds for the
moderate surges (13 m s21) are ;4 m s21 larger than for
the minor events, but there is a large standard deviation
and some overlap between minor and moderate. As a result, using winds alone to distinguish the magnitude of the
surge event may not be useful. Other factors may need to
be considered, such as the onshore fetch from the Atlantic,
duration of the event, wave amplitude, and local water
movements within the harbors.
It is interesting that the average peak wind speed occurs 2 h before the time of peak surge at the Battery.
Further investigation of individual cases also revealed
stronger winds a few hours before peak surge for several
cases, which suggests that it may take 1–2 h after the
peak wind for the high water associated with the surge
to impact fully the NYC harbor area. Future work will
need to investigate more carefully the movement and
source of surge water around the NYC area using a
coupled high-resolution ocean–atmospheric model. Also,
additional research is needed to investigate the global
teleconnections that may be associated with the decadal
variability in East Coast cyclone frequency and associated storm surge.
Acknowledgments. This publication is a resulting product from a project (NYSG R/CCP-13) funded under
Award NA07OAR4170010 from the National Sea Grant
College Program of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to
the Research Foundation of the State University of New
York on behalf of New York Sea Grant. The statements,
findings, conclusions, views, and recommendations are
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JOURNAL OF APPLIED METEOROLOGY AND CLIMATOLOGY
those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the
views of any of those organizations.
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